NEW YORK, NY.- During this particularly challenging time, the spread of COVID-19 is redefining the way we occupy and navigate our surrounding environment. It has caused us to re-evaluate our preparative measures for disaster, and in parallel, has sparked greater discussion around how to curb our impact on global warming, a slower pandemic with even higher stakes, to improve our planet for generations to come. Stay-at-home orders have led to the closure of national parks, beaches, waterways and spaces of open-air communion, which unsurprisingly have given environments the opportunity to heal. Global air pollution has fallen and waters are running clear in cities from Beijing to Venice, Los Angeles to Bangalore and in many parts of the world, wild animals are taking back what was once theirs. Looking beyond these positive effects, lockdowns alone won’t save the world from warming. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, we have a chance to not only spread awareness of the planet’s cries for help, but to develop and secure plans for a better future.

With this in mind, Jane Lombard Gallery introduces an Earth Day viewing room, In Celebration of the Natural World, paying homage to the global movement for climate action. Featuring work by Squeak Carnwath, James Clar, Lucy + Jorge Orta, Dan Perjovschi and Elizabeth Schwaiger, the exhibition showcases artwork made both in celebration of the natural world and in response to its need for preservation. In Celebration of the Natural World can be viewed on the Jane Lombard virtual viewing room.

Lucy + Jorge Orta’s selection from the Amazonia series is an evolving commentary on the need to conserve forests and wildlife worldwide, aiming to communicate an understanding of the value of the natural world, and the cost of environmental loss through viewer and collector-based participation. Each work in the Amazonia series comes with a Certificate of Moral Ownership, which corresponds to a one-meter square plot of land in the Amazon Rainforest. Through the purchase of individual artworks, the collectors are bound to “morally” owning a plot of land, and to its safeguard as laid out in the corresponding certificate.

Jame’s Clar’s featured works employ the power of LED and neon illumination, transfiguring the existentially ominous into the visually striking, and the invisible into the tangible. Methane Waves (Titus) and The New Normal, for instance, present as oculi into the realm of fantastical climate dystopia, or perhaps windows through the veil of visually present environmental effect.

Squeak Carnwath’s works on paper, Go to the Sea and How Many Greens, produced during her residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, utilize her vocabulary of abstract and representational images coupled with patchworked textual narratives reflecting on the surrounding coastal landscapes in Ballycastle, Ireland. Carnwath’s painting, Message in a Bottle, explores the current American socio-political environment, expressing her hopes and aspirations for the future of the country.

The drawing series, No Plan, by Dan Perjovschi, incorporates wit, wordplay and illustration to conduct a humorous and sharp critique of the international response (or lack there-of) to the climate crisis. Originally commissioned by Garage, Moscow, for their groundbreaking exhibition, The Coming World: Ecology as the New Politics 2030–2100.

A selection of paintings by Elizabeth Schwaiger explores the confluence of luxury and disaster. Juxtaposing lush interior spaces with pensive floodwaters, the paintings draw inspiration from Schwaiger’s time at the Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island in Florida, a landscape that is falling victim to rising sea levels.

The artworks presented within In Celebration of the Natural World purposely resist fixed narratives of a climate unaffected by or adapted to human occupancy. Acting as a conversational junction, the exhibition creates threads between the symbolic, the abstract and the veridical to provoke larger discussions around environmental awareness and preservation. To foster education and innovation in the areas of climate change, the gallery has decided to donate a percentage of sales to Ocean Conservancy, an environmental charity working to protect the ocean from today’s greatest global challenges.

Squeak Carnwath is a painter who lives and works in Oakland, CA. An artist whose career has spanned decades, Carnwath has cultivated a distinctive blend of disparate 1970s art movements, including New Image painting, Conceptual Art and above all Process Art. Her paintings fluently speak several languages at once. Areas of flat color are adrift with abstract and representational elements as well as writing — passing thoughts, the news, quips — often partly submerged in the shuffle of erasures and new additions. Despite a loose, improvisational appearance, there are secret moments of trompe l’oeil: pencil writing and charcoal scribbles are rendered in paint. Carnwath’s idea of process is all-inclusive: it combines the physical making of the painting with her thoughts, the world at large and also life in the studio. She has received numerous awards including a Lee Krasner Lifetime Achievement Award, the Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) Award from San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, two Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Award for Individual Artists from the Flintridge Foundation. Carnwath is Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley.

James Clar’s work is an analysis and observation on the effects of media and technology on our perception of culture, nationality, and identity. His interest is in new technology and production processes, using them as a medium, while analyzing and critiquing their modifying effects on human behavior. He lives and works in New York, NY. Clar received his BA in film and 3D animation and his MA in Media Art, the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) from the Tisch School, New York University. His work has been exhibited at Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ; Pera Art Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; Can Framis Museum, Barcelona; Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, South Korea; Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, FL; Sharjah Art Museum, Sharjah, UAE; MoMA PS1, New York, NY; Parasol unit, London, UK; The New Museum, New York, NY; Somerset House, London, UK; Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem and Shadai Gallery at Tokyo Polytechnic University, Tokyo, Japan. Clar has been an artist in residence at Eyebeam Atelier in New York, NY; Fabrica, Treviso, Italy, and the FedEx Institute of Technology/Lantana Projects, Memphis, TN.

Lucy + Jorge Orta’s collaborative practice focuses on social and ecological issues, employing a diversity of media – drawing, sculpture, installation, couture, painting, silkscreen, photography, video, light and performance. The Orta's studios are located in central Paris and Les Moulins, a cultural complex founded by the artists along an 8km stretch of the Grand Morin valley in Seine-et-Marne. Les Moulins is an extension of their practice, to establish a collective environment dedicated to artistic research and production of contemporary art. They have exhibited at the 46th Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition, Italy (1995); The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK and Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice Biennale, Italy (2005); Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Holland (2006); Biennial of the End of the World, Ushuaia and the Antarctic Peninsula (2007); Hangar Bicocca spazio d’arte, Milan, Italy (2008); Natural History Museum, London, UK (2010); MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Italy and Shanghai Biennale, China (2012); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK (2013); Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, USA and Parc de la Villette, Paris, France (2014); London Museum Ontario, Canada (2015); Attenborough Arts Centre, Leicester and City Gallery and Museum, Peterborough, UK (2016); Les Abbatoirs, France (2016), MuCEM, France (2017), Frieze Projects London (2017), Centro Cultural Kirchner, Argentina (2017).

Dan Perjovschi’s satirical works are sketchbook interventions with images and text in news, transforming the gallery into a space of relatable frustrations with sociopolitical conditions. Maintaining an ephemeral foundation, Perjovschi does not ignore the inherent contradictions of the socioeconomic privileged arena where his work can be found. To violence, opulence and extremism, he responds with puns, laughter and ridicule as the protection of freedom. He lives and works in Bucharest, Romania. Perjovschi has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany; MOT Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, Finland; the 48th and 52nd Venice Biennale; 9th Istanbul Biennial; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany and Manifesta 2, Luxembourg. Perjovschi has won prizes such as the Princess Margriet Award of the European Cultural Foundation and the George Maciunas Prize. His work is in the collections of the Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Center Pompidou, Paris, France; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden and the Tate, London, UK.

Elizabeth Schwaiger, based in Austin, TX and Brooklyn, NY, creates multi media paintings portraying the confluence of luxury and disaster. She received a Master’s degree from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011. She was recently awarded a residency by The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation at the artist's studio estate on Captiva Island, FL. Schwaiger's work is collected in North America and in Europe and has been exhibited in prominent museums in Liverpool, London, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Cardiff, and in Texas.